Email Is Dead(May 20, 2002) - Monday
mornings always bring the toughest email challenge of the week. A couple of days
of letting the mail accumulate on the server means turn on the machine and go
make coffee while 1,400 pieces of spam (and one note from Mom) trickle into
Outlook. Coffee in hand, we wonder about the psychic damage caused by reading
the subject lines as we delete ferociously.

Between opportunities to improve our sexual
prowess (and lord knows that's one of the many areas in which we need help), fix
our credit rating, re-mortgage our house, get a new job, buy prescription drugs
from overseas sources, practice our languages, spend our winnings, and,
subscribe to new and interesting magazines, it's hard to imagine where the work
fits in.

The note from Mom was short and sweet. The two
business mails sorted themselves nicely. Outlook crashed.

Total time consumed: 37 minutes. But the coffee
was good.

We have it far worse than most. After eight
years of daily publishing, the email address is on every imaginable list.
Spidering names from the Internet is hardly a selective method. There is no way
for the mass-marketers to know that we come from a long line of sexual supermen,
pay only in cash, have been booted from 30 Casinos for counting, own a pharmaceutical
company, produce porn, speak fluent Mandarin, have new jobs routinely and
subscribe to all known magazines.

And, it doesn't matter, economically, that we
will never be a good target for the spam. They figure that a quarter of a
percent response rate is an adequate excuse to waste someone else's time.

Our problems happen about a year before everyone
else's because of the high visibility of the address. So, we're actively looking
for other methods with which to communicate. From here, it looks like email is
dead.